Success Stories
Tina Morgan
It is not easy!! This is actually my third attempt at giving up smoking… I was a committed smoker… 25 – 30 per day! It has now been around 9 weeks, and it has been hard.
Once you make your mind up to quit choose your QUIT date (making sure it is not when you have an interview or a string of social events to attend), elicit the support of family, friends and colleagues; and most importantly a smoking cessation counsellor. City and Hackney PCT has a great team to help me quit, who have given me wonderful support.
It is so easy for people to say stay out of situations where you may smoke, change your routine! DON’T get up in the morning, DON’T go to work? Well somehow I don’t think our employers would be too happy about that. Stay out of clubs and pubs, stop accepting invitations to parties and other social events, become a recluse…. and personally I have found it best to actually put myself in those situations, if people are around me smoking and it is getting to me I pop a lozenge, take a ‘sip’ of my drink, get someone to dance, go to the loo, send a text… anything to distract me!
What to do when you get the dreaded craving? Make sure you have your chosen form of NRT around at all times, plus maybe some healthy snacks and chewing gum or mints. In fact if I were to empty my bag a selection of NRT, chewing gum and mints would be found.
Once you have stopped smoking, you will find the benefits show themselves quickly. Suddenly you can run up two flights of stairs instead of using the lift, your legs may buckle but you won’t be out of breath! Your taste buds start working again.. in fact you may not like the taste of some of things you eat (with any luck it will be chocolate!). The money in your pocket lasts so much longer and the praise and admiration you get is well worth it!
I don’t know if I am now a lifelong non-smoker, I take each day as it comes, and it is a challenge to get through each day without a cigarette. But, each day I feel better and healthier. I know that if I am going through a bad patch, my stop smoking advisor is there for support and encouragement to carry on.